Impact

The investment in PIHCIN, which followed closely on the heels of the CIHR Signature Initiative in Community Based Primary Health Care Innovation teams, has produced a strong research and dissemination infrastructure across every province and one territory. These networks are now sharing knowledge and evaluating the impact on the healthcare systems, identifying best practices in establishing partnerships and infrastructure and enabling scale-up of emerging new models of care across the country.

This transfer of evidence into practice and policy is occurring partially as a result of decision-makers/policy makers and knowledge-users (health care providers and patients) involvement much earlier stages of research development. PIHCIN created a standard of collaborative (across regions, across disciplines), cross-jurisdictional research and strong patient partnerships which is now considered the new normal.